the promise

The promise

By David Verveer

The bible says that the Lord promised the territory on the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and indeed, through the ages, people claiming blood relations to the two fathers of both the Arab and Jewish tribes lived un-interrupted in the holy land, after having conquered the area from the Philistines, Canaanites, etc. The so-called Moslem Palestinians ands the Jews are according DNA research, children of the same roots, and the impurity relates to neighboring tribes trading with the above descendants of Grandfather Abraham.

The rift between the Palestinian Moslems of today, Christians and Jews occurred in the Roman and Hellenistic period when the heads of the society were banned and forced to flee to less hostile regimes, but most people of our tribes stayed put in the holy land and accepted (mostly were forced to accept) the religion of the rulers.

Only when Intellects such as Herzl started to advocate that the Jewish people should return to their home land (now called Israel) they discovered that the promised land was not empty, and the locals (our cousins) were living there in poverty, ruled by big foreign powers (the Ottoman empire, and later on by the British (as a mandate). The local people (now called Palestinians) did nothing in order to gain their independence from the above foreign rulers, and were happy to continue their lives in relative poverty, provided they were left alone. Then two things happened, a – oil was discovered in the Middle East and b- the Jews started to immigrate to Israel (than Palestine). Soon we got 2 societies, the Jews and the Arabs (who served as laborers for the enterprising Jewish pioneers).

The relation between the two groups was relatively good, and if not, due to political propaganda from neighboring rulers, who feared the Jewish democratic approach, endangering their cozy feudal existence, by introducing horrible ideas such as human rights, equality and “one man one vote”, the coexistence would have continued, and indeed, a new Middle East would have emerged.

From the above you would assume that the Jews were good and the Arabs bad, of course this is untrue, as both cousins have good and bad people, in all levels of society. Arab terrorists killed innocent Jews during the end of the Turkish period and during the English Mandate, on the other hand, Jews drove innocent Arabs from their villages during the war of independence. Those Arabs fled and became, and still are, refugees, living under terrible conditions, in refugee camps, in the Arab countries surrounding Israel. The Arabs which somehow remained in Israel, gained prosperity, compared with Arabs everywhere, but somehow, never gained full equality, even though, equal by law. The main reason could be that the Arab does not serve compulsory in the Israeli Army.

In the mean time, millions of Jews immigrated to Israel, most from Europe, due to the Holocaust, but they came also from Arab countries, such as Morocco, and from the former Soviet Union, after the Communist regime collapsed. The former workable relation between local Arabs and Israeli Jews deteriorated to real hatred, especially after the terrorists started attacking Jews anywhere in the world, with methods, before considered illogical, such as suicide actions and kidnapping. Jews and Arabs stopped being equal, a sample of this is the current rate of exchange between one kidnapped Israeli soldier and convicted terrorists (1:1,000). Still the Israeli Government has problems to persuade the people to approve such exchange, even though; such deal will save thousands of tax dollars required to keep those bastards alive.

One should also remember that in this region of the world, “vendetta” still has enormous power, or in other words, you touch one of my kin, we retaliate by hurting one of your kin, irrelevant if he is or was involved. You shoot us, we shoot back, if you don’t do this, you show weakness. The terrorists shoot rockets; we shoot back, and of course, hurt innocent people.

The before mentioned millions of immigrants received on arrival immigration allowance, help and work, and in a short period converted in to full blood citizens. Compared to giving the new immigrant full rights, those poor Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, who still have not received any human rights, citizenship or possibility of succeeding to build up a normal life. The reason for this, is politics, by giving the refugees rights, they (the Arab rulers) would lose the only card for grievance with the new Israel state.

But our story is not yet complete, as Moslems fleeing their home countries to Europe and America, Europe’s open door policy in search for employment, are led by a small group of Reactionary Islamists, which not only demanded full religious rights, but also trying to influence the decision makers by forcing them, with the help of terrorism, to change their open handed policies in the Middle East. Samples of such actions are; London bombing, Madrid train bombing, New York 9-7, or even Turkey, Indonesia, Moslems countries, but not belonging to the Arab league.

The question is, if these terrorist actions are caused by the Middle East crisis, is “not related”, even though, we, Jews are blamed for everything, but the fact is, we are only a very small coil in the main fight of the Moslem and Western civilizations. Their fight with Europe and America will not benefit the Palestinian cause, just the opposite; it will weaken their getting support from the West. The fight today is about Iraq and Pakistan, oil dollars and prestige of USA and NATO, and Israel and Palestine is just a political nuisance to be considered during election campaigns.

If this is true, what will help the poor Palestinian, mishandled by local terrorists such as Hamas not receiving the simple human right for living in peace? I truly am happy I was born on the right side of Abraham’s bed!